224979 Cpl. Joseph Fitzsimmons British Army 2nd Btn. Coldstream Guards from:Grasslot, Cumbria Joseph Fitzsimmons served with the 2nd Coldstream Guards. I am doing research for our local Maritime museum at Maryport and have been given copy from a Newspaper at the time: "Grasslot Man's Appeal From the Trenches.
Big Guns Remind Him of the Bells.
Corporal Joseph Fitzsimmons of the 2nd Battalion the Coldstream Guards, and formerly of Grasslot in a further letter to his friend, Mr. R. Edgar, Grasslot says he spent Christmas and New Year in the trenches. On New Years Eve the bullets were flying, and the guns singing over the trenches put him in mind of the bells ringing in England. He is now a few miles back from the firing line having a rest after being in the trenches for two weeks. They had a hot time again, and lost a lot of men. They were up to the waist in mud and water, and had to stick it all the time. The Germans were only 50 yards away in some places, and tried very hard to make the British leave their trenches by throwing bombs into them. "But," says Corporal Fitzsimmons, "that did not matter we stuck in like real old British soldiers who never say die. The trenches were in a turnip field and they were flooded out with water. We had to wade among it all the time and it rained very nearly every day, and was very cold as well. Corporal Fitzsimmons goes on to state that he received a parcel of socks from the mission at Grasslot for which he is very grateful. He expresses his pleasure that Mr. Edgar's brother has enlisted, and mentions that his own brother is now in France, though he has not seen him yet. He has seen nobody he knows from Maryport yet, though he looks out for them every day.
In his few leisure moments in the trenches Corporal Fitzsimmons composed the following verses. Coming straight from the battlefield, written to the awful music of the guns, they make a splendid appeal by one who has been at the front from the very first, and has engaged in some of the hardest fighting :-
- When you're drinking your tots of whisky,
- And you're smoking your fat cigar,
- And your eyes have brightly twinkled
- At the girl behind the bar ; Just think of Tommy Atkins
- In his cold wet trench of clay,
- With nothing much to cheer him
- But his rations for the day.
- When you've discussed the latest victories
- Of the Russians and the French,
- When you've praised aloud our gallant troops
- For fighting in the trench ;
- When you've stated to your comrades
- Your opinion of the fight
- And look upon the prospect
- In many a different light ;
- Have you ever thought about yourself
- And the bit that you could do ?
- Has Kitchener to shout in vain -
- "Your country has need of you !"
- Put on you khaki uniform,
And leave your feather bed ;
- They can never say you shirked it
- When Danger lay ahead.
Sat. 9th January"
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